How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Smoke

An optimistic take on California’s future.

LNU Lightning Complex Fires, just getting started, as viewed from my afternoon run in Helen Putnam Regional Park in Petaluma, CA. Looks like a mushroom cloud, no?

Now that the rain has finally closed the chapter on California’s vicious 2020 fire and smoke season, a little reflection is in order from a longtime resident. Especially as friends and family ask me why I continue to live here.

First, some context. In 2001, I road tripped from Connecticut to California to live the dream. The attitudes were perpetually optimistic, epic nature was accessible year-round, and anyone could build houses anywhere. The magical possibilities were infinite.

Nearly 20 years later, it’s clear the California vision sold to me — and millions of others — was an unsustainable, false bill of goods. A heaping dose of climate change-induced factors soured the contract even further. But I’m not holding a grudge. Because California was meant to burn. Let’s not feign ignorance by the fire and smoke events of the past five years. A quick trip to the metaphorical library could have taught any of us that:

• “Between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California.” [source]
• “California was a very smoky place historically [and]…it’s still probably less than what used to be burned before Europeans arrived.” [source]
• “The Forest Fires Emergency Act in 1908…[ensured] that no wildfire be allowed to burn,” kicking off a century of fire suppression. [source]
• “California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to re-stabilize in terms of fire.” [source]

Our construction in wildland urban interfaces has surged over the past 30 years as well, altering firefighting strategies and resource allocation to protect structures — and when that protection fails, it’s no longer just foliage burning. Plastics, metals, chemicals, and more now mingle in the ash as well. This toxic mist is dangerous, and not just for Californians given national dependencies on our agricultural output: California is responsible for 90% (or more) of “organic almonds, artichokes, avocados, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, dates, figs, grapes, strawberries, lemons, lettuce, plums, and walnuts.” That ash is nestling itself into the soil, water, and all the way to your…